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Pre-Occupy In the 2000s, I was part of the anti-globalization movement. At Occupy, I found that protests have come a long way in a short time.
By Aaron Lake Smith |
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A Different Drummer To be happy in marching band, you must maintain certain illusions. I lasted one year.
By Kati Nolfi |
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A Reckless Autonomy My friends and I would do anything to see the bands we loved. They moved on to babies, mortgages, and jobs, but I can't give up the music.
By Aaron Gilbreath |
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Most Likely to Reflect I was worried how I'd look at my 40th high school reunion. When it was over, I faced a bigger fear.
By Paula Marantz Cohen |
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Clothes Make the Humanities Professor Yes, teachers can dress like slobs — I know I did. But that doesn't mean we should.
By Robert Watts |
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Family Ties Few people can see their great-great-great-grandfather's liver. But I can: Chang and Eng's double liver is on display at Philadelphia's Mütter Museum, and that's where I went to celebrate their 200th birthday.
By Mary Sydnor |
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Alive with Pleasure The FDA is considering a ban on menthol cigarettes, claiming the minty flavors make the smokes more addictive. As a former menthol addict, I understand.
By Erica Westly |
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A Moment My student didn't finish the assignment because he couldn't be ''in the moment.'' I hear ya, kid.
By Jerry DeNuccio |
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Singing the Maliblues Teaching students how to drive is not for the weak of heart, especially when your company's car is a dumpy Malibu that might not last through the lesson.
By Thomas Sullivan |
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Norman and Me I went to Mailer's Provincetown house to work. He wrote every single day; living with his ghost, I found I couldn't even get started.
By Amy Rowland |
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The Metaphysics of Cutting Grass The chore offers the pleasure of visible accomplishment. More important, it lets me hook those thoughts lurking just beneath the surface.
By Jerry DeNuccio |
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Unbearable Bodies Days of bulimia were simple: I bought, I ate, I threw it up. Days with my doctor are the hard ones.
By Kati Nolfi
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Blue Brothers My students said the poems I taught were too sad. But they were only 9. They'll learn, one day...
By Kristen Hoggatt
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Paternal Instinct My father and I had very different ideas about what I should do with my life. His vision, for example, did not include traveling to Sri Lanka or selling my eggs.
By Jennifer Meleana Hee |
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Oh. Canada. In the 1920s, my Jewish great-grandparents escaped to the harsh plains of Saskatchewan. Such was the 20th century — the last in which land offered hope for a new life.
By Stefany Anne Golberg |
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Building Mileage Boston is entering winter just as I enter my 30s. The signs of time's passing, in other words, are all around me.
By Kristen Hoggatt
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My Facebook Ombudsman The truth is out there...and not as Facebook status updates.
By Alex Strum
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On Nicknaming I hated that my insufferable boss thought he came up with good nicknames. He was as bad at nicknaming as he was at using e-mail.
By Erin Denver
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The Yard Sale Among the things I discovered on coming to the U.S.: Americans' habit of selling stuff on their lawns.
By Sujatha Bagal
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Toss Around the Ol' Pigskin? Call the gender divide outdated, but Rosemary and I just could not get into football.
By Paula Marantz Cohen
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The U.S. Poetry Academy Poetry saved my life. I desperately wanted it to save my Uzbek students' lives, too.
By Kristen Hoggatt |
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Facing the Issue I don't know if it was Michael Vick or the idea of food with a face. Either way, I'm not eating animals anymore.
By Paula Marantz Cohen
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Here Is the Church, Here Is the Steeple.... Running a small church is a lot like running a small business. And you know how easy that is.
By William Whitehead
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What About Bob? My neighbor Bob would have made a good friend, if only I could have read the obit before he died.
By David Wallis
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The Good Fight Everyone thinks tai chi is that arm-waving thing old ladies do in urban
parks. But some practice taiji — as it's better transliterated — as a
martial art. Its unspoken rule? Weirdos Only.
Nick Mamatas |
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Life's Work The Social Security statement should worry us, but it's too good a scrapbook of our working lives.
By Thomas Washington
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Stadium Seating Retracing a roadtrip of my youth via Segway, I realize that much has changed (beyond the invention of the Segway).
By Karl Taro Greenfeld
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Fast Friends? There's no place like home for the holidays. Unless that home is next to a Wendy's.
By Jesse Smith
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The Term Paper Artist Curious about the state of higher education in America? Take a job churning out pages on Shakespeare, Faulkner, and the man one client called "Plah-toe."
By Nick Mamatas |
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"My Grandson, the Writer" My grandmother was the grande dame of an elite summer colony in New Hampshire; I was the brooding 18-year-old living with her.
By Bill Donahue |
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X-Men and Suicide Girls Used to be a girl could read comics with the boys. Then the boys saw that a few X-Men had breasts.
By Meg Favreau
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The Impracticality of Poets Breaking news: Life as a poet not lucrative!!!
By Kristen Hoggatt
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Small Town Cinderella At the tiny amusement park where I worked, my costume smelled, the pirate boat had an awful driver, and the teacup ride could've taken a kid's leg off. Story Land was no Disney World.
By Meg Favreau |
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Private Eye, Public Ear I thought life as a private eye was fast cars and faster women. It's ended up being a lot of sob stories.
By Steve Wilson
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At a Crossroads I spent four years at Harvard. A year in Japan. And then two at my parents' house in Reading, Pennsylvania. An excerpt from a new illustrated book.
By Kate T. Williamson |
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Disposable My father just closed the wood mill our family owned for 50 years, and here I had him assembling a particleboard bed from IKEA.
By Meg Favreau
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A Bigger Boat I went to Cape Cod with my girlfriend. Her ex-boyfriend came, too. And so did a shark.
By Michael Trudeau |
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Tales of a Home Shopping Employee How fake diamonds, meat by mail, and Marie Osmond turned an aspiring fiction writer into a QVC employee...and shopper.
By Meg Favreau |
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Welcome to America...You're Under Arrest As a Pakistani living in the U.S., I spent a night in jail over an unpaid speeding ticket. I was denied citizenship because of a DUI. And I was mistaken for the guy who beat me up.
By S. Abbas Raza |
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License to Carry a Gun You might think a poetry teacher and a loaded gun would make an unlikely pair. You'd be right.
By John Skoyles |
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The Breast-Laid Plans My mother told me: 'It’s about time you got some breasts.' Implants weren't a car. But, hey, she was buying.
By Jessica Allen |
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Marathon Session Marathon season just got off to a rough start in Chicago. Two years ago, I started off down this 26-mile rocky road myself.
By John Barry |
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Confessions of a Community Theater Critic It's not a gig for the weak of heart. It's for the eternal optimist,
the dead-end journalist who doesn't believe in dead ends.
By John Barry |
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Monkey and Dog I tried to write about a monkey/dog friendship, but I just keep coming back to myself.
By Adam Eisenberg |
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Acts of Confession Christian hookups, stolen sandwiches, a sexy weekend in Duluth, and the most stupid argument ever. A video essay in multiple acts.
By Dave Mondy |
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Tough Love My husband wants to be Rocky. But am I willing to be Adrienne?
By Rachel McCrystal |
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Forgive Some Sinner His father was one of the greatest sportswriters of Sports Illustrated's golden age. And then it all fell apart. Now, a son tries to make sense of his father's legacy.
By Mark Kram Jr. |
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Drama and Melodrama One person tells another that they no longer want to grow old with them, and the toast pops up. Notes towards a definition of maturity.
By Alain de Botton |
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